This invention relates to systems and methods for uploading captured content to a remote site. More particularly, this invention relates to systems and methods for capturing content in response to events and publishing the content at a remote site where it is accessible through a registered user account.
Systems exist for allowing users to capture content and provide it to a remote system. For example, it is common today for people to take pictures with digital cameras and provide the pictures to their friends via e-mail. Even this common operation can prove difficult to some users because of the complexity of the steps involved. For example, users first take a picture with a digital camera. The user must then upload the picture to their personal computer in a particular media format, launch an e-mail program, and generate a message with the intended recipient's correct address. The user then must locate the file, attach it to the e-mail, and send the e-mail.
Other schemes for providing locally captured content to a remote system can involve additional steps and complexity. Take for example, an approach for allowing people to post pictures or other locally-captured content to a web site. After a user e-mails a picture to the web site, a system administrator opens the email, accesses the attached media, performs any required formatting of the media in order to comply with the display environment of the web site, and the media may then be published to the web site. After the content is published to the web site, users may access the publicly accessible content using a web browser.
Approaches may become even more cumbersome to users when, for example, content is captured for users independent of their activity. Thus, it may be desirable to automate, and perhaps simplify, the capturing and publishing of content.
Whether or not automated, it may be desirable to publish locally captured content for remote access in other situations. For example, some modems allow users to set up voice-mail boxes for recording incoming messages. The messages are recorded in response to events (i.e., incoming calls). Users must, however, call into the voice-mail boxes to retrieve their messages. When the line is busy or when a failure occurs, such as when a user's personal computer loses power, the user cannot access his or her messages. Thus, for reliability, accessibility, or other reasons, it may be desirable to provide systems and methods for publishing content, which may be captured automatically or in response to user activity, on a remote system for access by the user.
It is therefore an object of the present invention to provide systems and methods for capturing content and publishing the content on a remote system. The capturing of the content, publishing of the content, or both, may be automated.